


The Classic Paradox

by TemporaryDysphoria



Category: Lupin III, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Descriptions of war, Multi, Violence, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25046560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TemporaryDysphoria/pseuds/TemporaryDysphoria
Summary: Jigen met the man many years ago. When he spoke of him he never mentioned his name. For him, John Watson was a name best forgotten, associated with different times, a different life.Or so he thought.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	The Classic Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> Should I be starting another WIP? _No!_  
>  Am I gonna do it anyway? _Yes!_

Afghanistan was hot.

And dry.

And dusty.

The official’s daughter that Jigen was guarding had lived here her entire life – she knew nothing else. She laughed when Jigen told her stories about places where there was no sand, no desert. He showed her pictures and she looked at them in wonder, fingers tracing the faded colours of waterfalls, of jungles, places the gunman had been in his travels. He wasn’t a babysitter. But he could have happily been, when she looked at him in awe as he recounted his travels – as he spun tales about a gentleman thief and his gunman who were exploring a tomb in south America, or digging their way through ice in Scandinavia.

He could have been.

He had six more months to kill. Six more months until Lupin would return from the dead. 6 more months of sand in his shoes, of doing crosswords with a 9-year old on a dusty afternoon.

He didn’t make it past two.

Afghanistan was a country divided by war. It had been for years. But for this area of the country, war had become a distant memory. Something that only happened in other parts of the country. Confidence would lead to complacency.

And then war came to them.

It came to them in the middle of the afternoon, with its tanks, and air bombers. They rumbled down the streets and whistled overhead like drunken husbands returning loudly from a night on the town. The peaceful sounds of the desert in the afternoon were replaced by the quick staccato of machine gun fire, and the symphony of death that followed.

Jigen had a simple job.

He only had to keep one person alive.

It should have been easy.

But like many things in life, what should have been, what could have been, and what actually occurred, were vastly different things.

His young charge screams when the noise of the nearby explosion hurts her eardrums. He stumbles over the Farsi as he picks her up and starts to move towards the meeting point. She screams louder when he has to pull the Magnum from his belt and carve a path, and he knows in that moment he won’t be telling bedtime stories anymore. Now he too, is nothing more than one of the monsters. 

She won’t look at him when he sets her down next to her terrified mother at the meeting point. Not when the memory of gunfire is still so fresh, when there’s more gunfire on the horizon, tangling with the rumble of heavy armoured vehicles and the loud booms of falling buildings.

It’s almost a shame.

A plume of dust rises a few blocks over.

Her husband is still over there, his charge’s mother says, eyes blank, face flat.

“Get Daddy,” screams the nine-year-old, and then he’s not a monster anymore. Now he can be a hero, for this child at least.

Jigen reloads his pistol. It’s time to earn his pay.

Afghanistan is hot.

And dry.

And dusty.

Even in a suit made for the climate, Jigen sweats. Dirt and dust stick to clammy skin, in the absence of anything else to cling to. A building collapses beside him in a roar of sound, and then he can’t hear anything.

The violence with the absence of sound is more shocking than hearing it.

Tanks rumble forward uncaring and bulldoze buildings with nothing more than a low ring. A bomb drops in the distance to his left with a muted bang. He ducks behind a doorway as a troop carrier slides past, wheels spinning in the sand.

He almost makes it to his employer’s office building.

He doesn’t hear the gun discharge. He doesn’t hear anything.

He feels a sharp pain in his lower back, and feels his abdomen rip. When he looks down, the sand is stained with red.

Afghanistan is hot.

The heat from his body rushes to where he finally realises, he’s been shot. Afghanistan is hot, but Jigen’s fingers are cold, and so are his feet.

Afghanistan is dry.

The sand drinks his lifeblood like it’s dying of thirst, and perhaps it is. The sand is red, but the grains still trickle through his fingers. Just like in an hourglass, they slowly trickle on.

Afghanistan is dusty.

Dusty feet kick sand into Jigen’s mouth. Dusty pants kneel beside his head and they’re probably attached to a dusty face. He suspects so anyway, because there’s a voice coming from somewhere above him, and it’s not Farsi, and it’s not Japanese, it’s not a language he’s spoken since Lupin went to ground.

“Can you hear me?” the voice says, vowels and consonants bleeding into tinnitus, turning into a high-pitched whine.

A dusty hand lifts Jigen’s wrist and holds it. Jigen groans because making vowels and consonants in a language he hasn’t spoken in months is hard, and he’s so cold, in this hot country; so dry, as he bleeds into the sand.

“Medic!” he hears, the vowels stretched out like a prayer.

“Medic!” and there’s a face above him in a dusty khaki, poking him and prodding him.

“Medic!” and there’s a ripping and then there’s nothing but pain.

Pain that he screams through as they press down hard on his stomach. Pain that doesn’t stop, doesn’t relent. Then there’s new pain in his arm, in his leg, and he’s not so cold anymore. He’s hot again like the sand. The red, red sand.


End file.
